Advances have been made in identifying genetic etiologies of congenital heart defects. Through this knowledge, preventive strategies have been designed and instituted, and prospective parents are counseled regarding their risk of having an affected child. Great strides have been made in genetic variant identification, and genetic susceptibility to environmental exposures has been hypothesized as an etiology for congenital heart defects. Unfortunately, similar advances in understanding have not been made regarding strategies to prevent nongenetic risk factors. Less information is available regarding the potential adverse effect of modifiable risk factors on the fetal heart. This review summarizes the available literature on these modifiable exposures that may alter the risk for congenital heart disease. Information regarding paternal characteristics and conditions, maternal therapeutic drug exposures, parental nontherapeutic drug exposures, and parental environmental exposures are presented. Factors are presented in terms of risk for congenital heart defects as a group. These factors also are broken down by specific defect type. Although additional investigations are needed in this area, many of the discussed risk factors present an opportunity for prevention of potential disease.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 17. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 07 October 2026.
All research outputs
#2,770,295
of 33,779,198 outputs
Outputs from Pediatric Cardiology
#57
of 2,326 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#20,448
of 240,426 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Pediatric Cardiology
#2
of 26 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,779,198 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 91st percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,326 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 4.0. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 240,426 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 26 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.
